Google unveiled its Project Tango smartphone, a mobile device equipped with a depth sensor, a motion tracking camera, and two vision processors that let the phone track its position in space and create 3D maps in real time. The device is particularly useful for robots, which have to navigate and locate themselves in the world. Indeed, a video showed how Google and its partners were putting the smartphone on different kinds of robots, including mobile platforms and manipulator arms.Now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania led by Professor Vijay Kumar are taking things one step further. After getting a Tango device from Google, they put it on one of their quadrotors and let it loose inside their lab.
Via Nigel Brown

“ A new project of an autonomous airship – a hybrid between a drone and a satellite – has been developed in France. The 'StratoBus' dirigible drone will be able to carry out long endurance observation operating at an altitude of about 20 kilometers. ”The new breed of autonomous zeppelin has a mission of “observation, security, telecommunications, broadcasting, and navigation,” developers said. Designed to be between 70 and 100 meters long and 20 to 30 meters in diameter, made of carbon fiber, and equipped with two motors, the StratoBus will be able to operate at an altitude of about 20 kilometers in the lower reaches of the stratosphere – above air traffic and jet streams. The airship will be able to take higher resolution images and maintain a stronger communications system, as it will roam airspace much lower than actual satellites.
Via Nigel Brown

“ With a 3D model created using aerial images from an unmanned aircraft, Wake Forest researchers are providing a new look at the extent of coal ash contaminants leaked into a North Carolina river earlier this month. The approach holds promise as an effective means to monitor environmental contamination in the case of similar incidents.”
Via Nigel Brown

“ A conference on agricultural drones at Harper Adams College last week was certainly well-attended. But will these high-tech/high-price pieces of equipment prove to be the answer to arable farmers’ crop surveillance needs? Oliver Mark reports”
Via Nigel Brown

FFmpeg and its forked Libav have each added an H.265 / HEVC encoder today to their respective code-bases. Going back to the middle of last year there's been the open-source x265 project for implementing the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video format that succeds H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. We have also seen open-source HEVC / H.265 support come via libde265 as a decoder for this video format that doubles the data compression ratio of H.264 while at the same video quality level.
Via Nicolas Weil

“Who among us has not wanted to create their own drone? [Stefan] wrote in to tell us about a project for high school students, where a Styrofoam glider (translated) is converted into an Android (or PC) controlled drone.”
Via F. Thunus

“ If you want a quad core development board for less than $100, you only have two choices right now: Radxa Rock powered by Rockchip RK3188, and Hardkernel ODROID-U3 powered by Samsung Exynos 4412...”
Via cnxsoft

Wowza® Media Systems, provider of Simply Powerful StreamingTM media server software, today announced it is collaborating with DivX to demonstrate real-time encoding and decoding of DivX Live streaming in up to HD 720p resolution using the HEVC/H.265 codec over MPEG-DASH. The demonstration is powered by the latest MainConcept HEVC SDK, version 2.0, and is one of the first of its kind to enable live streaming for DivX-compatible HEVC/H.265 over MPEG-DASH. The Wowza-enabled solution is designed to automatically transcode a single MPEG-TS H.264 720p incoming stream in real time to a set of DivX Live H.265-over-DASH adaptive streams.
Via Nicolas Weil

“The BeagleBone Black has been launched about a year ago, and this low cost ARM Linux board has become pretty popular with hobbyists, robotics courses at universities, and even people making products....”
Via cnxsoft

“ New Miniaturised Technology helping Conservation A great video featuring Environmental scientists in Cambridge in the UK , that are developing new ways of using miniaturised technology and drone to”
Via TechinBiz, Nigel Brown

As before, I was very excited when Google released VP9 – for one, because I was one of the people involved in creating it back when I worked for Google (I no longer do). How good is it, and how much better can it be? To evaluate that question, Clément Bœsch and I set out to write a VP9 decoder from scratch for FFmpeg. The goals never changed from the original ffvp8 situation (community-developed, fast, free from the beginning). We also wanted to answer new questions: how does a well-written decoder compare, speed-wise, with a well-written decoder for other codecs?
Via Nicolas Weil

“ The BeagleBone is the perhaps the least known of these platforms, but an incredibly capable board worthy of consideration for many projects. It is a powerful Linux computer that fits inside an Alt...”
Via Gumersindo Fernández

“ Radxa Rock is an Android & Linux development board based on Rockchip RK3188 with 2GB RAM, 8GB NAND Flash, several I/Os that’s been available in beta version to a small number of developers...”
Via cnxsoft

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